Friedemann Friese introduces "Fast Forward" games

25 Jul 2017 by Jerodev

Friedemann Friese is a German board game designer that is known to try and implement new and bold elements in the games that he creates. He mostly does this to experiment what is possible in the world of board games. This year he is doing it again with the games he calls "Fast Forward"-games.

Some examples of his best known experiments are Foppen and Fische Fluppen Frikadellen. Foppen is a special trick taking game where players can be kicked out of the game by the others for a certain amount of rounds, this way they can hinder other players to take more points. Fische Fluppen Frikadellen is a goods trading game with the special feature that players can interact with market stalls of another instance of the game. They can trade goods with players at another table, but they do not know the prices there in advance.

Last year, Friedemann brought us Fabled Fruit. The way you end a playthrough of this board game has an influence on the next game that will be played, just like the Legacy games. At the start of the next game, you will receive a hand of cards based on the position you ended at in the last game. A normal game of Fabled Fruit takes about 20 minutes, but this continuation system makes it so that all these playthroughs create one big game without having one very long game. Friedemann himself calls this system the "Fable Game system".

In 2017, he wants to go one step further with this in the "Fast Forward" games. These games take over the same "Fable Game System" as Fabled Fruit, every game starts with a pile of cards in a certain order that will be used over different playthroughs. When the game is over, the next playthrough will start at that certain location on the pile where the last game ended. This makes it possible to restart the game at any time so you can play it with another group.
But, there's even more than that! Fast Forward means that there are no manuals to read before being able to play the game. When you buy the game and open the box, you can start playing immediately. Take the first card from the pile in the box, and this one will contain the first instructions.

The box arts for the three Fast Forward games

As of now, three games have been announced in this series: Fear, Fortress and Flee. For every game, a few mechanics are already known from the prototypes that have been playable at different conventions, but these could be changed since. We won't disclose any of these here because we think these games are more fun to be played spoiler free the first time.

The games will be available for playing and buying at Spiel 2017 this October. Keep an eye on this website for more updates about these games.

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